Antonia Fraser
Author of Marie Antoinette: The Journey
About the Author
Antonia Fraser is the author of numerous internationally bestselling biographies, including "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "Cromwell: Our Chief of Men". (Publisher Provided)
Image credit: Antonia Fraser en 2022
Series
Works by Antonia Fraser
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (1975) — Editor & Introduction — 1,249 copies, 9 reviews
The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829 (2018) 223 copies, 4 reviews
The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them (2015) — Editor & Introduction — 104 copies, 2 reviews
The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton: A 19th Century Heroine Who Wanted Justice for Women (2021) 63 copies, 1 review
Mary Queen of Scots/Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family (Reader's Digest Great Biographies in Large Type) (1989) — Contributor — 1 copy
Wars of the Roses 1 copy
Jemima Shore 1-8 1 copy
Puppen 1 copy
[Oxford Blood: A Jemima Shore Mystery (Jemima Shore Mysteries (Paperback))] [Author: Fraser, Lady Antonia] [October, 1998] (1998) 1 copy, 1 review
No title 1 copy
Author: Antonia Fraser 1 copy
Cromwell by Antonia Fraser (2001-03-30) — Author — 1 copy
Associated Works
What Might Have Been : Leading Historians on Twelve 'What Ifs' of History (2004) — Contributor — 197 copies, 6 reviews
The Clans of the Scottish Highlands: The Costumes of the Clans (1980) — Foreword — 118 copies, 2 reviews
Women of Mystery II: Stories From Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (1994) — Contributor — 56 copies, 1 review
Great Mystery Series: Top Female Sleuths by 8 of the Best Women Mystery Writers (1991) — Contributor — 6 copies
Reader's Digest World's Greatest Biographies: George Washington | Mary Queen of Scots | Colin Powell (2001) 6 copies
Great Mystery Series: Eight of the Best Mysteries by the Top Women Writers [audiobook] (2000) — Contributor — 3 copies
The execution of Mary Queen of Scots : an eyewitness account by Sir Robert Wingfield of Upton (1587) — Foreword — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Fraser, Antonia
- Legal name
- Fraser, Antonia Margaret Caroline
- Other names
- Fraser, Lady Antonia
Pinter, Lady Antonia
Pakenham, Antonia Margaret Caroline (birth) - Birthdate
- 1932-08-27
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University (BA ∙ 1953 ∙ History)
Dragon School, Oxford
St. Mary's School, Ascot - Occupations
- historian
crime writer
aristocrat
biographer - Organizations
- Weidenfeld & Nicholson
British Crime Writers Association
Sir Walter Scott Club
English PEN
Royal Stuart Society - Awards and honors
- Companion of Honour (2018)
Order of the British Empire (Dame Commander, 2011)
Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 2003)
Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1999)
Norton Medlicott Medal (2000)
St. Louis Literary Award (1996) (show all 7)
Wolfson History Prize (1984) - Relationships
- Pakenham, Frank, 7th Earl of Longford (father)
Longford, Elizabeth (mother)
Pinter, Harold (second husband)
Fraser, Flora (daughter)
Billington, Rachel (sister)
Pakenham, Thomas Francis Dermot, 8th Earl of Longford (brother) (show all 15)
Kazantzis, Judith (sister)
Fraser-Cavassoni, Natasha (daughter)
Fraser, Rebecca (daughter)
Pakenham, Valerie (sister-in-law)
Powell, Lady Violet (aunt)
Pakenham, Edward (uncle)
Fraser, Sir Hugh (first husband) m.1956-1977
Clive, Mary (aunt)
Lamb, Lady Pansy (aunt) - Short biography
- Lady Antonia Fraser, née Pakenham, was born in London to an aristocratic English family. Her mother was the distinguished biography Elizabeth Longford. She was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, St. Mary's School, Ascot, and Oxford University. She is the author of major historical biographies, including Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), The Weaker Vessel (1984) and The Wives of Henry VIII (1996), as well as a popular mystery series featuring British television personality and investigative journalist Jemima Shore. She is a past chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. Lady Antonia married her second husband, the late Harold Pinter, in 1980, and is sometimes known as Lady Antonia Pinter. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE JUNE - FRASER & CONRAD in 75 Books Challenge for 2016 (December 2016)
Reviews
I loved this book, even though it is absolutely tragic. The author does an excellent job at the end of depicting the misogyny of the times by contrasting the authorities' treatment of Marie Antionette and King Louis XVI - or is it just lingering scraps of respect for a king being demonstrated, when no such scraps existed for this "enemy alien" queen?
The great danger for a biographer is to become too fond of her subject. I can't help but feel that that happened to Antonia Fraser here.
There is no question but that the future King Charles II had a difficult upbringing -- caught up while still a teenager in the Civil War, with his father executed when he was 18, leaving Charles a king in exile, trying to find a way to survive with no money and no real friends and no obvious prospects, Then, suddenly, restored to the throne as he entered his show more thirties. A less resilient man would have surely become far more neurotic, likely seeing threats everywhere. Charles, instead, became a courageous, affable, personally tolerant man.
He was also lazy, a determined liar, a cheat, and a man with little willingness to plan for the future. And, at a time when Louis XIV of France was threatening to take over Europe, he largely aided and abetted the efforts -- a failing that would leave his successors fighting against Louis for a third of a century.
And there were the mistresses, and the bastards. This is not me getting holier-than-Charles. English kings had had bastard children before -- Henry I was said to have some three dozen illegitimate children, and Edward IV kept a rotating stable of three mistresses. Charles was relatively restrained; he usually had only one woman-on-the-side at a time. But Henry and Edward hadn't raised their mistresses to the upper peerage -- hadn't even done particularly much for their children. Charles made several of his mistresses duchesses, and their children dukes. This represented a big strain on an over-extended treasury, and it didn't really do anyone any good. It also did long-term damage to the House of Lords. Had Charles just given them a few manors and made them gentry, the kids would still have been ahead of the game and England would have had a lot more money for useful projects.
And Charles's treatment of Scotland and Ireland was simply bad, forcing the Duke of Lauderdale on the former and trying to use the latter as a source of money and land when there just wasn't any available. Having spent time in Scotland at the beginning of his exile, he clearly wanted as little as possible to do with it thereafter.
But Charles's worst failing regarded the succession. Charles had no legitimate children, so his heir was his brother, the future James II. Who was Catholic, which was bad enough, but who was also (much, much worse) Ye Standard Stuart -- i.e. very stupid, very bigoted, and very convinced that he was neither and that he had the divine right of kings. James was, predictably, overthrown three years after Charles II died. Charles could have prevented it -- Parliament had repeatedly tried to take up Exclusion, to try to keep James off the throne, and Charles had prorogued or dissolved the parliament, and taken a subsidy from Louis XIV, to prevent Exclusion from happening. Maybe Charles's tricks would have been worth it had James II been a better man -- but, remember, James was overthrown in 1688, and the very Exclusion law that Charles had opposed became a major part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. The Glorious Revolution was unquestionably good -- a second Magna Carta, in a way. But Charles could have brought much of it about without the bloodshed, if he'd been willing to do the work.
There are good things about him -- e.g. he founded the Royal Society (a fact that Fraser perhaps under-plays -- at least, it seems so to me as someone with scientific training). And his faults don't change the fact that Charles was mostly loved by the people, and came to look even better in hindsight, given that his successors were the tyrant James II, the dour William III, the neurotic Anne, and the lumpish George I. But, remember, Charles could have short-cut around all that agony. And this book never really addresses his failure to do so.
There are other ways in which this book is too prone to accept the common opinion. Take the oldest of Charles's illegitimate sons, who eventually became the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth opposed Charles's pro-James policies (in other words, was on the right side of history), was pushed into rebellion against James II in 1685, and was defeated and executed. Fraser takes the view that Monmouth was a handsome, shallow, useless tool of others. It is certainly true that he was manipulated into his rebellion. But, prior to that, he had undertaken useful military reforms, and had crushed a Scottish rebellion at Bothwell Bridge with both firmness and leniency. I've read three different studies of Monmouth's life and rebellion, and every one of them finds him to have been a better man than Fraser makes him.
Charles II was a very good man during the first half of his life -- the years of adversity. He lost much of that virtue in his years of prosperity. And Fraser never seems to notice the change. show less
There is no question but that the future King Charles II had a difficult upbringing -- caught up while still a teenager in the Civil War, with his father executed when he was 18, leaving Charles a king in exile, trying to find a way to survive with no money and no real friends and no obvious prospects, Then, suddenly, restored to the throne as he entered his show more thirties. A less resilient man would have surely become far more neurotic, likely seeing threats everywhere. Charles, instead, became a courageous, affable, personally tolerant man.
He was also lazy, a determined liar, a cheat, and a man with little willingness to plan for the future. And, at a time when Louis XIV of France was threatening to take over Europe, he largely aided and abetted the efforts -- a failing that would leave his successors fighting against Louis for a third of a century.
And there were the mistresses, and the bastards. This is not me getting holier-than-Charles. English kings had had bastard children before -- Henry I was said to have some three dozen illegitimate children, and Edward IV kept a rotating stable of three mistresses. Charles was relatively restrained; he usually had only one woman-on-the-side at a time. But Henry and Edward hadn't raised their mistresses to the upper peerage -- hadn't even done particularly much for their children. Charles made several of his mistresses duchesses, and their children dukes. This represented a big strain on an over-extended treasury, and it didn't really do anyone any good. It also did long-term damage to the House of Lords. Had Charles just given them a few manors and made them gentry, the kids would still have been ahead of the game and England would have had a lot more money for useful projects.
And Charles's treatment of Scotland and Ireland was simply bad, forcing the Duke of Lauderdale on the former and trying to use the latter as a source of money and land when there just wasn't any available. Having spent time in Scotland at the beginning of his exile, he clearly wanted as little as possible to do with it thereafter.
But Charles's worst failing regarded the succession. Charles had no legitimate children, so his heir was his brother, the future James II. Who was Catholic, which was bad enough, but who was also (much, much worse) Ye Standard Stuart -- i.e. very stupid, very bigoted, and very convinced that he was neither and that he had the divine right of kings. James was, predictably, overthrown three years after Charles II died. Charles could have prevented it -- Parliament had repeatedly tried to take up Exclusion, to try to keep James off the throne, and Charles had prorogued or dissolved the parliament, and taken a subsidy from Louis XIV, to prevent Exclusion from happening. Maybe Charles's tricks would have been worth it had James II been a better man -- but, remember, James was overthrown in 1688, and the very Exclusion law that Charles had opposed became a major part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. The Glorious Revolution was unquestionably good -- a second Magna Carta, in a way. But Charles could have brought much of it about without the bloodshed, if he'd been willing to do the work.
There are good things about him -- e.g. he founded the Royal Society (a fact that Fraser perhaps under-plays -- at least, it seems so to me as someone with scientific training). And his faults don't change the fact that Charles was mostly loved by the people, and came to look even better in hindsight, given that his successors were the tyrant James II, the dour William III, the neurotic Anne, and the lumpish George I. But, remember, Charles could have short-cut around all that agony. And this book never really addresses his failure to do so.
There are other ways in which this book is too prone to accept the common opinion. Take the oldest of Charles's illegitimate sons, who eventually became the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth opposed Charles's pro-James policies (in other words, was on the right side of history), was pushed into rebellion against James II in 1685, and was defeated and executed. Fraser takes the view that Monmouth was a handsome, shallow, useless tool of others. It is certainly true that he was manipulated into his rebellion. But, prior to that, he had undertaken useful military reforms, and had crushed a Scottish rebellion at Bothwell Bridge with both firmness and leniency. I've read three different studies of Monmouth's life and rebellion, and every one of them finds him to have been a better man than Fraser makes him.
Charles II was a very good man during the first half of his life -- the years of adversity. He lost much of that virtue in his years of prosperity. And Fraser never seems to notice the change. show less
I've somehow never got around to reading any of her biographies or historical writings, so the image of Lady Antonia Fraser that sticks in my mind tends to be the one I picked up in childhood, of her adding a touch of glamour to BBC2 panel shows otherwise populated mostly by ageing male actors and (ex-)comedians. This anthology obviously owes something to that playful side of her public persona, but its real roots seem to be in the work she did researching her Mary Queen of Scots biography, show more which came out about five years before this. There's one poem by Mary herself in the book (in Fraser's own translation from the French), as well as poems attributed to her ancestor James I and her son James VI.
The title of the anthology raises two obvious questions, both of which Fraser deals with by simple editorial fiat: a poem is Scottish/a love poem if I say it is. Which is probably as good a test as any other, but it doesn't make it easy to work out whether there is any kind of common thread we can pick out. Anyway, it's billed as "a personal anthology", and it is quite fun to see some of the interesting juxtapositions she sets up by putting (say) Hugh MacDiarmid's twentieth century "synthetic Scots" next to a Border ballad or to Lord Byron's Regency standard English.
Obviously, if you think of Scottish love poems you think of Robert Burns, and he is reasonably well-represented in the selection, with a mix of familiar and less familiar pieces, but it's very interesting to see how much else there is, from the early 15th century right down to Liz Lochhead, still in her twenties when this first came out. Some very well-known names, but also a lot who were new to me.
Fraser has fun dividing the topic of "Love" into semi-serious subheadings, from "Wooings" to "Old loves". She fits in a few poems that are about "other" kinds of love (mother-child, for instance), and there are a few instances of suspicious avoidance of gendered pronouns to offset all those gung-ho ballads about demon lovers carrying their ladies off across the moors on horseback. Plenty that's witty, a certain amount that's sentimental, and quite a lot that's simply miserable — more or less what you would hope to find. Not all that much apart from Burns that's straightforwardly erotic (and none of Burns's really bawdy stuff), however.
Unusually for a poetry book, I can think of a real, practical use for this anthology: it's going to be in my backpack next time I'm invited to a Burns supper, for those moments when someone says "Does anyone want to read a Scottish poem that isn't by Burns?" show less
The title of the anthology raises two obvious questions, both of which Fraser deals with by simple editorial fiat: a poem is Scottish/a love poem if I say it is. Which is probably as good a test as any other, but it doesn't make it easy to work out whether there is any kind of common thread we can pick out. Anyway, it's billed as "a personal anthology", and it is quite fun to see some of the interesting juxtapositions she sets up by putting (say) Hugh MacDiarmid's twentieth century "synthetic Scots" next to a Border ballad or to Lord Byron's Regency standard English.
Obviously, if you think of Scottish love poems you think of Robert Burns, and he is reasonably well-represented in the selection, with a mix of familiar and less familiar pieces, but it's very interesting to see how much else there is, from the early 15th century right down to Liz Lochhead, still in her twenties when this first came out. Some very well-known names, but also a lot who were new to me.
Fraser has fun dividing the topic of "Love" into semi-serious subheadings, from "Wooings" to "Old loves". She fits in a few poems that are about "other" kinds of love (mother-child, for instance), and there are a few instances of suspicious avoidance of gendered pronouns to offset all those gung-ho ballads about demon lovers carrying their ladies off across the moors on horseback. Plenty that's witty, a certain amount that's sentimental, and quite a lot that's simply miserable — more or less what you would hope to find. Not all that much apart from Burns that's straightforwardly erotic (and none of Burns's really bawdy stuff), however.
Unusually for a poetry book, I can think of a real, practical use for this anthology: it's going to be in my backpack next time I'm invited to a Burns supper, for those moments when someone says "Does anyone want to read a Scottish poem that isn't by Burns?" show less
Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake" nor she was promiscuous or spent all the money in luxury more than anybody else in the royal court or her private society, nor she was illiterate or had ADHD. What she was was a smart woman who had her education delayed from her mother, the mighty Maria Teresa of Austria, not being her main concern, she was incredibly sympathetic to everyone in any social class making her understand the complaints of the common people, she had a remakable show more maternal instinct making her a better mother than most queens, she was a people pleaser surprising everybody who ended up knowing her, she never escaped from France when she had the opportunity when the result would be leaving her husband and/or children, she never had anything but love for France her brothers and sisters abroad, she had a great sense of duty so even though her husband couldn't perform for the first seven years of their marriage she waited and waited and tried to get involved in politics the last few years of her life even though she was never interested. For all these virtues she was the political tool of her mother and older brother (Joseph II emperor of Austria), and the scapegoat for the problems of France and the opportunists who wanted her death long before the revolution. She did nothing but suffer humiliations and torture for the last four years of her life, and even though this remakable book makes you care for everything that's happening Marie Antoinette is always in the background, until the last three chapters where you can't feel anything but empathy for this woman who had her destiny already set by France and disgust for this world knowing full well that when we talk about "politics" in the dinner table with the family or friends is nothing more than gossip and charitable reforms that we happened to believe in, knowing full well that to actually talk about politics we need to understand complex structural reasons from a anthropological, philosophical, historical and cultural perspective of the contemporary problems that haunt us every day, but God knows we haven't change. Anyway this book is incredible, please read it. Bye.
Her was an uncommon story but did not begin with an uncommon situation. Where she was exceptionally unlucky was to be shunted off to France in order the cement a Habsburg-Bourbon teatry, entered into after the Seven Years War, which reversed traditional alliances. Yet this treaty was purely one of convenience for the great ones involved; it carried with it neither the hearts not the minds of the French court. She was, after all, l'Autrichienne long before she appeared in France. show less
Her was an uncommon story but did not begin with an uncommon situation. Where she was exceptionally unlucky was to be shunted off to France in order the cement a Habsburg-Bourbon teatry, entered into after the Seven Years War, which reversed traditional alliances. Yet this treaty was purely one of convenience for the great ones involved; it carried with it neither the hearts not the minds of the French court. She was, after all, l'Autrichienne long before she appeared in France. show less
Lists
Folio Society (1)
THE WAR ROOM (1)
1960s (1)
Roman Britain (1)
Best Biographies (1)
Female Author (2)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 83
- Also by
- 58
- Members
- 22,603
- Popularity
- #937
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 327
- ISBNs
- 657
- Languages
- 15
- Favorited
- 71
